Reliance buys furniture retailer Urban Ladder

Reliance buys furniture retailer Urban Ladder | hindi news

November 24, 2020 Authorbaji55

On Sunday, Reliance Industries Ltd said it purchased a 96% stake in online furniture retailer Urban Ladder for 1,821.2 million rupees ($24.4 million), continuing its attempt to extend its presence in the online retail sector in India.

In a space currently dominated by Walmart Inc's Flipkart and Amazon.com Inc's Indian arm, the Indian conglomerate is expanding its so-called new commerce company, which connects neighbourhood stores to Reliance for online delivery of food, apparel and electronics.

The purchase "will further enable the group's digital and new commerce initiatives and widen the bouquet of consumer products provided by the group," Reliance said in a Sunday exchange filing.

Reliance Retail Ventures Limited, a Reliance Industries subsidiary, has an option to purchase the remaining stake, the company said, adding that by December 2023 it intends to invest a further 750 million rupees.

According to Crunchbase, a market intelligence website, Urban Ladder, which counts Steadview Capital, SAIF Partners, Sequoia and Kalaari Capital among its investors, has raised $114.9 million in funding.

In July, the Indian news website Moneycontrol reported that the company was looking to sell for a sixth of its peak valuation hit two years earlier, following some top executives' resignations and job cuts in 2019.

After the conglomerate raised over $20 billion this year from global investors, including Facebook Inc by selling stakes in its Jio Platforms digital company, Reliance Industries, owned by Asia's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is lining up investors in its retail unit.